This is a director's shooting diary of Siren, a new feature film written by Andrew Hull & Geoffrey Gunn. Christopher Granier-Deferre is producing and we are on Location shooting in Tunisia.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Day 15

We started at the new beach location at Rimmel, close to Bizerte in front of some spectacular shipwrecks that we had found on our first surveys back in July. It was calm and clear and the stillness was a welcome relief after the blasts of wind at the previous beach. We were set up on a large dune right in front of a military firing range after lugging our equipment a long way from the base camp. We had shot a couple of large masters of Oien and Anna running the last stretch to the water when the phone call came. The owner of the wrecks had somehow heard about us shooting in front of his boat and was threatening to call the police to have us evicted. It was impossible to believe. After being so excited about these stunning wrecks for so long, it was hearbreaking that they were being taken away from us. If there was ever a moment for a tantrum, it was now. It soon became clear however, that tantrum or not, we had to move. There had been an arrangement made with the owner which gave him control over the area of beach just in front of the boat and there was nothing we could do but move over to the other smaller section of a boat that was further along. In the ongoing series of Ma sa Allah moments the strangest thing happened. We hadn't actually looked at the other location as it was a little rocky and harder to get to. While waiting for the frantic negotiations over the original locations to give us an answere, we went down to check the other option it became apparent quite quickly that it was a better location. There was an enormous tidal pool in front of us that gave us the water, to play in all day, waves cresting on the breakers in front of us and the spectaclar tilted half of a freighter as a backdrop with the open sea beyond. We had somehow been given yet another gift.